Happy Birthday World Wide Web -- Looking Good At 25

Most of us use the web so many times in a day that we hardly give it a second thought. But as the web turns 25, we thought it deserved some appreciation.

According to Pew Research Institute, on March 12, 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote a paper proposing a system for “information management”. He concluded the paper by saying that “the aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important”. This paper became the structure for what we know today as the World Wide Web. (The Internet, on the other hand, started development in the 1960s.)

Years later, the web is part of everything we do — from work to leisure. We’re connected to it on our computers, and our tablets and cellphones. Whether we’re using it to share pictures of our food, or getting in touch with loved ones across the world, functioning without the web is a nightmare we don’t want to imagine.

Here are 25 ways the web has made our lives easier in the past 25 years: